Dena Shottenkirk

Dena Shottenkirk is an analytic philosopher specializing in aesthetics and epistemology. Her doctoral dissertation, "Nominalism and Its Aftermath: The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman," was published by Springer in 2009. Shottenkirk is also a practicing artist who has a background in art criticism with former staff positions at both Artforum and Art in America. In that arena, also in 2009, Cambridge Scholars Press published her book Cover Up the Dirty Parts! Funding, Fighting and the First Amendment, which presents a critic's view of the art that has caused political uproar along with a philosopher's view of the general epistemological and social roles of art. In 2009-10, she and Dr. Anjan Chatterjee of UPenn (neurology) published a book chapter (published by Novascience) entitled "Those Dumb Artists," which dealt with the cognitive access artists have to their own work. In 2012 she jointly (with Jamie Lindsay) edited a philosophy reader, "Reality, Knowledge, and Values."

Education:

Areas of Expertise:

Aesthetics is the study of the philosophy of art. Within that are many subcategories, but Dena Shottenkirk's interests lie in how art functions as a form of knowledge and how it conveys meaning. Epistemology is the philosophical study of how we know the world; it concerns itself with questions of how knowledge is processed by us and in what form that is knowledge encapsulated.

Books and Publications

Cover Up the Dirty Parts! Funding, Fighting and the First Amendment. Cambridge Scholars Press. (Books and Publications: Book) 2009

Nominalism and Its Aftermath: The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman. Springer. (Books and Publications: Book) 2009

Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums

Professional Leadership

Serving on the advisory board of an organization formed by a Brooklyn College graduate with the intent of establishing a non-profit (501(c)) for the purpose of establishing an artists' residency program in Italy. This will be made available to M.F.A. graduates of CUNY schools. Postresidency, the artists will return to New York where they will give lectures to the public explaining their residency experience. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009